Harry H. Novak

Legendary exploitation cinema producer and distributor Harry H. Novak was born on January 12, 1928, in Chicago, IL. He got a job with RKO Pictures distributing movie posters and press books to theaters while still in his teens. Following a tour of duty in the Army during World War II, Novak went back to RKO, this time booking and selling films as well as designing ads (amazingly, one of his primary responsibilities while working at RKO was handling the distribution arrangements for innocuous family fare made by the Walt Disney studio!). After RKO folded in 1957, Harry went to work booking exploitation films for the JEM distribution company. He founded his own production and distribution outfit called Boxoffice International Pictures (BIP) in 1964. The first film released by BIP was the nice'n'naughty nudie cutie Kiss Me Quick! (1964). Harry went on to make and/or release a slew of entertainingly trashy flicks throughout the 1960s and 1970s that run the gamut from sexy soft-core smut (Lila (1968), The Dirty Mind of Young Sally (1973), Below the Belt (1971)) to grimy crime thrillers (Booby Trap (1970), The Godson (1971), A Scream in the Streets (1973), Date with a Kidnapper (1976), Hitch Hike to Hell (1977)) to sizzling Southern-fried hicksploitation sleaze Country Hooker (1974), Country Cuzzins (1972), The Pig Keeper's Daughter (1972), Sassy Sue (1973)) to mondo crock documentaries (Mondo Mod (1967), Mondo Keyhole (1966)) to creepy horror outings (The Mad Butcher (1971), Frankenstein's Castle of Freaks (1974), Axe (1977), Rattlers (1976), The Child (1968)_). Novak's soft-core items often featured such popular drive-in film starlets as Rene Bond, Colleen Brennan (aka Sharon Kelly), Marsha Jordan and Uschi Digard. Boxoffice International Pictures was forced to shut down in 1978. Harry subsequently launched Valiant International Pictures in the late 1970s; this particular outfit distributed such X-rated porno fare as Sissy's Hot Summer (1979), Sweet Surrender (1980) and Leather Persuasion (1980). Novak co-directed the early 1980's hardcore movies Moments of Love (1983) and Inspirations (1982) under the pseudonym H. Hershey. Moreover, he provided several hysterically bawdy commentaries on DVD releases of his pictures on the Something Weird Video label. Harry Novak died on March 26, 2014.